Daily Life During The Reformation (40 page)

But we will say that he is the man that visiteth forreine
Kingdomes and doth truly travell
. . .
travelleth
for the greater benefit of his wit, for the commodity of his studies, and the
dexterity of his life, who moveth more in minde then body, who attayneth to the
same by the course of his travel, that others doe at home very painfully and
with great study by turning of bookes.

But there were other benefits, too:

. . .
But what shall I say of the other fruits of travell? Where shalt
thou more happily and studiously attaine to all the liberal sciences then in
Germany, which doth excell the auncient Egyptians in the study of Geometrie,
the Hebrews in Religion, the Chaldaeans in Arithmeticke, the Grecians in all
arts, the Romans in discipline, and in variety of mechanicall trades, constancy
and fortitude, all other nations.

While boys were often permitted to go to other countries to
study, girls remained at home to prepare for marriage. Some, who were more
ambitious, followed a classical literary course of study, but these were rare.

Felix Platter (son of Thomas Platter), who set off to
Montpellier to study, traveled on horseback. En route, he and his companions
ran into a storm and, seeking shelter, found an inn in the village of Mezieres
which, unbeknownst to them, was a haven for bandits and murderers. The inn

. . .
was kept by a woman, who could find

space for us only on the ground
floor, in a room

open to all the four winds. In
this room was

a long table, at which sat a
number of Savoyard

peasants and beggars, eating
roasted chestnuts

and black bread and drinking
cheap wine.

Although not keen, they decided to spend the night there
rather than continue in the bad weather, and since there was no room for them,
joined the men sitting at the table who were drinking heavily and who
eventually staggered out into the adjoining room to sleep by the fire. Platter’s
guide overheard them plotting to kill and rob them by waiting for them in the
forest, so after the men fell into a drunken sleep, Felix’s group left quietly
for Geneva before daylight. There, he heard Calvin preach to a large group of
people and met up with a new traveling companion. En route they saw bodies of
men hanging from the trees, and on entering the town of Lyon

. . . met a
Christian [Protestant?] who was being led out to be burnt outside the gate; he
was in his shirt with a truss of straw fastened on his back.

On his way to visit a friend, he had to cross the river in
a small boat run by a woman. When they reached the middle, she demanded the
fare, threatening to throw Felix overboard if he didn’t pay immediately. Not
having the exact money, he overpaid her since she refused to give him change.
When he returned to Lyon later in the day, he went via a bridge, although the
journey was longer.

In
all, it took him 20 days to travel 95 miles and reach Montpellier.

18 - THIRTY YEARS’ WAR

In
the year 1618, all the troubles of Europe, social, economic, and religious were
released in a frenzy of war and atrocities. At no time throughout the long
Middle Ages or the Early Modern period did the four horsemen of the Apocalypse
(religion, war, famine, and death) ride so brazenly over the European lands.

For much of the population of Germany, the apocalypse,
foretold by preachers and laymen, seemed to have arrived. The forces of evil
and the forces of good were about to engage each other in a cataclysmic battle.
Both Catholics and Protestants considered themselves the force of good. In the
Holy Roman Empire, an interwoven population pattern of Catholic and Protestant
sects turned to bloody disaster. Townsmen and peasants were often caught in the
path of advancing or retreating mercenary armies generally more bent on plunder
and rape than on religious ideologies.

The simmering cauldron began to boil over when the Holy
Roman Emperor, Rudolf II, transferred his court from Vienna to Prague in 1583
and placed Catholics in the key positions of the provincial administration
throughout Bohemia. In 1608 anti-Catholic forces advanced into Bohemia and the
following year Rudolf reluctantly issued a charter granting freedom of worship
to both Catholics and Protestants. Upon Rudolph’s death in 1612, Matthias
became emperor, and in 1617 Catholic officials closed Protestant chapels in
violation of a religious-liberty guarantee of 1609. At an assembly called by
the Protestants, the imperial regents representing the emperor were accused of
violating the guarantee and were thrown from a window of the council room of
Prague Castle. Only the regents’ pride was seriously hurt, but the incident
sparked the Bohemian revolt against the emperor.

Soon after the defenestration of Prague, the battle lines
were drawn throughout all of Greater Bohemia (Bohemia, Silesia, Lusatia, and
Moravia) under a new Catholic emperor, Ferdinand II. On November 8, 1620,
imperial forces won a great victory at White Mountain near Prague, and Bohemia
soon fell back into the hands of the Catholics. Leaders of the rebellion were
executed and others who had participated had their property confiscated.
Ferdinand rescinded the declaration of 1609 and began a program, led by the
Jesuits, to eradicate Protestants. The League of Evangelical Union, a
collection of German Protestant states, was dissolved,
and the remnants of the Protestant armies fled north.

DANISH INTERVENTION 1625–1629

Threatened by the recent Catholic military successes,
Denmark, a sympathetic Protestant nation under King Christian IV (also king of
Norway), feared for its sovereignty and rising Habsburg power. Raising an army
he invaded Germany in 1625. The Danish troops were forced to fall back under
the combined pressure of two Habsburg armies led by Albrecht von Wallenstein
and Count Johannes Tilly. Christian IV signed the Treaty of Lu¨ beck with the
Habsburgs dynasty ending Danish intervention in the war.

SWEDISH INTERVENTION 1630–1635

Under Gustavus Adolphus, Sweden entered the war on the side
of the Protestants and drove the Catholic armies back regaining Protestant
territory. The Swedish army lived off the land, and its invasion of Catholic
areas resulted in cruelty and pillage. Gustavus forced loans from Jews and
Catholics alike to sustain his army and held religious leaders for ransom.
After the death of Gustavus in the Battle of Lutzen in 1632, the Protestant
armies were soundly defeated in the battle of Nordlingen in Bavaria in 1634.

To appease the nobility of the Baltic regions and to win
them over to his side, General Wallenstein exempted them from all taxation and
lay the burden for financing his war effort on the peasants and townsmen.
Adding insult to injury, the people were forced to attend lectures and sermons
by Jesuit clergy.

Protestants who had seen their houses, farms, and
businesses taken over by Catholics were also out for blood. When the Swedes
invaded Bohemia and took Prague, the Lutherans of the city who had been
dispossessed of property and forced to wander around in misery now took back
their property, plundered their Catholic overlords and churches, and silenced
anyone who resisted.

FRENCH INTERVENTION

France, alarmed by Habsburg power and despite its own
Catholic orientation, entered and prolonged the war. The French government had
already helped finance Denmark’s intervention. French and Swedish armies
defeated Emperor Ferdinand III and the imperial army at the Battle of
Zusmarshausen in Bavaria in 1648 bringing the conflict to an end.

SOLDIERS

The regions ravaged by war took years to recover. The
common people of Germany were overwhelmed with soldiers, some carrying the
plague and other diseases.

The majority of soldiers, mostly mercenaries, did not have
specific uniforms and dressed the best they could. To identify themselves as
friend and not foe they used head or armbands along with passwords. In many
cases in Germany, there was little alternative than to become mercenary
soldiers when their farms and livelihood were destroyed in battles or by
looters. Providing for the many thousands of mercenary soldiers was generally a
problem. Sometimes the men were enlisted by the prince of a realm and sometimes
through independent organizations of recruiters. Suppliers of the men-at-arms
were also private entrepreneurs.

During the course of the Thirty Years’ War, the situation
for the common soldier deteriorated as clothes and boots wore out and were hard
to replace due to shortages in supplies. Food was often slow in coming as the
means of production might be far removed from the war zone where crops and
animals had been destroyed. Living conditions in battle areas quickly
degenerated as masses of men fouled their camps. Ragged and torn tents were
difficult to replace. Foraging was too often the only means to stave off hunger
and undernourished, weakened troops died more often from contagious diseases
than in battle. When pay turned up, there was nothing to buy in a badly
devastated area; and when not fighting or scrounging, money was used for
gambling or to buy food from a private provider that turned up now and again
around army camps to sell produce at an enormously inflated price. Soldiers
accompanied by families, as was frequently the case, or by female companions,
had to look after their welfare also. Lack of discipline and desertion were
always present and commanders resorted to severe military justice.

PLIGHT OF THE COMMON PEOPLE

In some places such as Sweden, men were conscripted for the
ranks often resulting in hardships for peasant families who needed their young
sons in the fields for planting and harvesting. Many would never return, and
others came back maimed, presenting still further adversity.

With the economy in ruins, the common people of Germany
suffered the most. They were the ones who supplied the needs of the large
armies, willingly or not. Those who had not become totally destitute paid much
heavier taxes to the state that in turn paid the soldiers. Workers and peasants
lucky enough to escape the great devastation were close to the brink of ruin as
larger and larger percentages of their crops or money went to the state in
taxes as the war continued on.

When armies loomed on the horizon, the inhabitants fled
into the forests trying to survive on berries, wild fruit, bark, and roots.
Subject to the elements, many died of exposure. Entire villages and towns were
razed to the ground. Many people lost everything.

After months of hiding out in the dark forests of southwest
Germany, it takes little imagination to picture men, women, and children, their
faces hollow and sunken, ribs protruding, and eyes glazed. With raw fingers
tearing at roots to chew on and stripping bark from trees to suck out the few
nutrients, picking maggots and worms from decaying plants, they shuffled from
place to place moving through the trees in search of anything edible. Stumbling
upon a hamlet they would see flames and smoke rising from the houses and
withdraw back into the forest to avoid the mercenaries warming themselves by
the fires, roasting a cow, and drinking the plundered wines, dead villagers
lying at their feet.

Those who had seen their houses and crops destroyed as
armies passed through, saw the process repeated as they retreated, and again as
another army passed in pursuit. Agriculture all but ceased.

Depredation and misery gripped the land for years. Sieges
were particularly difficult for townsmen. In the autumn of 1638, Bernhard of
Saxe-Weimar besieged the city of Breisach, cutting it off from provisions for
nearly four months. Nearly all the animals including house pets were eaten.
Rumors were rife of cannibalism as children disappeared never to be seen again.
One contemporary reported cannibalism in the prisons and the eating of
kidnapped children.

In the countryside, once cultivated fields returned to
shrub and forest land, and wolves stalked the villages and farms in search of
food.

In Brandenburg, about half the population were lost, while
in some areas about two-thirds of the people perished. The male population of
Germany was reduced by almost 50 percent. The Czechs declined by a third; the
Swedish armies alone are thought to have destroyed 2,000 castles, 18,000
villages, and 1,500 towns in Germany—one-third of all towns there.

RURAL POPULATIONS

Pitched battles between large armies took place mostly in
the countryside with inestimable damage to crops and livestock. Whole areas
were depopulated as the peasantry en masse left for safer ground.